Volunteer Tax Preparers Needed

APPLY ON-LINE FOR THE VITA INTERNSHIP HERE

Position Description: Tax preparers with UMBC VITA (Volunteer Income Tax Assistance) will complete personal income tax returns for low income individuals and families from the greater Baltimore area on UMBC’s campus. They will also advise clients on avoiding unnecessary fees and leveraging refunds over time through bonds and savings accounts. Tax season is between mid-February and early April and appointments will be on designated Saturdays during the season. Volunteers will be working as a part of the Baltimore CASH (Creating Assets, Savings, and Hope) Campaign which partners with VITA to provide tax preparation services to lowincome families throughout the greater Baltimore area.

Qualifications: This opportunity only requires IRS tax preparer certification. Certification is earned by attending three training sessions, one online and two in a classroom setting during the month of January, as well as passing a certification exam at the end.  Training is provided by Baltimore Cash Campaign and the IRS.  Completing the training and passing the exam will officially give you IRS certification and authorize you to complete tax returns during the spring semester. These training sessions will amount to about 15 hours total, however you may need to spend additional time preparing for the exam.  While this opportunity is certainly a helpful supplement to those pursuing financially related majors it is in no way needed.  Knowledge of tax preparation and tax law is helpful to almost any field of study.

Responsibilities: Completing the free training sessions in January. Interviewing clients and preparing and reviewing documentation needed to accurately complete tax returns. Administrative tasks at the VITA site. Reviewing completed tax returns. Doing follow-up interviews with clients and completing quality reviews. Perks: This is an excellent opportunity to gain both work experience related to the field of financial economics and IRS certification for resume building. You will also be actively engaging with and providing aid to those in need of help in your broader community. Finally, internship credit through the economics department and Career Center is also being offered on an individual basis.  Schedule:

Tax Preparation Sessions will be on the following Saturdays, 9am-2pm:  February 27, March 5, March 19, March 26, and April 9, 2016.  Attendance at all of these sessions is strongly encouraged.  

Questions?  Contact Trisha Wells at twells@umbc.edu or 410-455-2393.

Name: Shannon Donelan 

Internship, Co-op or Research Site: GE Aviation

Position Title: Engineering Design Intern

Major(s)/Minor(s): Mechanical Engineering

Expected Graduation Year: May 2016

Briefly describe your internship, co-op,  or research opportunity, including your day-to-day tasks, responsibilities, and assignments.

This summer, I worked as an intern at the GE Aviation headquarters in Cincinnati, OH. I worked in the Advanced Composites department, specifically Polymer Matrix Composites (PMC) Design. PMC Design is the department responsible for designing the fan blades on the front of jet engines. We worked on fan blades for the GE9x engine, which will be used to power the new Boeing 777x jet airliner. In my role as a design intern,I had a lot of projects. My main project was to design a new system for testing the metal leading edges of the GE9x product blade (the silver parts of fan blades) to ensure that they meet design intent. This required me to lead a team in multiple geographical locations and involved extensive work in the CAD program Unigraphics NX. I also coordinated efforts to prepare for the Fan Blade Out (FBO) test which will be completed in England using fan blades made in the US. An FBO test is when an explosive charge is detonated inside a fan blade in order to detach the blade while the engine is running. Other projects I worked on included compiling and graphing blade machining data, completing an ice mass sensor analysis, designing a stand to hold the fan blades upright, and writing design reviews. At this stage in the GE9x design process, the fan blade parts were undergoing extensive testing and I was able to participate in a lot of the tests. 

Describe the process of obtaining your internship, research, or co-op opportunity.

This is my second co-op rotation with GE Aviation. Last summer, I worked on the design team at their plant in Norwich, NY. I applied for this position my sophomore year when GE Aviation came to UMBC to do on-campus interviews through the Shriver Center. I submitted my resume for consideration through UMBCworks.The interview went well and I was offered a job. After last summer, GE sent out return offers and I really enjoyed my first rotation so I decided to return for this summer. When I applied, I wasn't sure where I would be working. I later found out I would be working at the Aviation headquarters in Cincinnati, OH. I was a bit nervous about moving to Cincinnati for the summer but it turned out to be a wonderful experience! I would recommend an out-of-state internship to anyone who likes trying new things and going out of their comfort zone.

What have you enjoyed the most about your position or organization/company?

Working at GE for the past two summers has been phenomenal! My managers have always been extremely knowledgable, approachable, and willing to help me learn. I've had the chance to meet so many different people from all over the world because GE is a global business. I've worked with people everywhere from Mexico to France and I've become close friends with interns from all over the country. Also, GE encourages its employees to participate in trips, picnics, and other fun activities, even during work hours! The higher-level executives are friendly and listen to their employees by hosting lunches and round table discussions. I've gotten to meet multiple vice presidents of GE, including the Vice President of the Engineering division. One of my favorite parts of this summer was visiting Peebles Test Facility. Peebles is where production engines are given certification tests. It's an incredible feeling to see the fully completed engines being subjected to real-life operation conditions.

How do you believe you have made an impact through your work?

GE was the first company to successfully use polymeric matrix composites (PMCs) on their engine's front fan blades. Composite blades are more lightweight and durable than metal blades and their use has become a trademark of GE Aviation. I was honored to work on the new GE9x engine PMC fan blades. I think the best part about working on fan blades was that it's one of the few components of the engine that I can point to and you can actually see. I like knowing that the blades I'm helping to design will one day be on commercial planes everywhere, helping people travel the world. 

What advice would you give to another student who is seeking an internship or similar experience?

I would suggest applying to different places to find what type of engineering you like and what type of roles appeal to you. Working at GE and learning about the design process has shown me which part of that process I want to specialize in. From design to manufacturing, there is a place for everyone, whether you like to be at a computer all day or running around on your feet. Internships can also help you figure out where you'd like to live and work in the future. They can also lead to a job. I have accepted an offer to work at GE Aviation after graduation as a design engineer in the Edison Engineering Development Program (EEDP) thanks to my past internships at GE. I would suggest seeking an internship away from home and moving someplace new. It's only for a summer and you never know what type of great experiences you'll have!

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Want to be the next Intern of the Week? Make sure to fill out this form and stay tuned. New interns are announced every Friday!

CHMPR Distinguished Lecture Series

Programming and Tuning a Quantum Annealing Computer to Solve Real-World Applications

Dr. Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz

Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
NASA Ames Research Center

2:00pm Monday 26 October 2015, ITE 325b

Since September 2013 and through a partnership with Google and USRA, NASA Ames Research Center has been working with a quantum device that has the promise of harnessing quantum-mechanical effects to speed up the solution of optimization problems. Solving real-world applications with quantum algorithms requires overcoming several challenges, ranging from translating the computational problem at hand to the quantum-machine language, to tuning several other parameters of the quantum algorithm that have a significant impact on performance of the device. In this talk, we discuss these challenges, strategies developed to enhance performance, and also a more efficient implementation of several applications. Although we will focus on applications of interest to NASA’s Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the methods and concepts presented here apply to a broader family of hard discrete optimization problems that might also be present in many machine-learning algorithms.

Alejandro Perdomo-Ortiz is a Research Scientist at NASA Ames Research Center, Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, where he works in the design of quantum algorithms to solve hard optimization problems. Alejandro received a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from Harvard University. He is a three-time winner of Harvard’s Certificate of Excellence in Teaching and a recipient of the Dudley R. Herschbach Teaching Award. He is originally from Cali, Colombia where he performed undergraduate studies in Chemistry at Universidad del Valle. Within the NASA team, he is interested in understanding the scalability and performance of quantum annealing algorithms and their realistic experimental implementations for broad applications in space exploration research.

Host: Prof. Milton Halem, Sorry, you need javascript to view this email address.

If you haven't made it to a Critical Social Justice event yet, today is a wonderful opportunity to join us. From 12-2pm on Commons Main Street the Women's Center will be hosting Vines, Rhymes, and Headlines: Telling the Story of Baltimore. This is an interactive exhibit that you can spend as much time (or as little time) checking out. Our student staff have put a ton an effort into creating their research boards and Prezi presentations related to the story of Baltimore and the Uprisings and it would be great to support their efforts. Moreover,

•    From 12-1pm, editor-in-chief of Baltimore's City Paper Karen Houppert and independent journalist James MacArthur (Baltimore Spectator) will be talking about journalism, ethical reporting, and new media in a discussion moderated by Professor Deborah Rudacille. 

•    At 1:15pm, Michael Stone, who has been working with Dr. Denise Meringolo on the BaltimoreUprising2015.org crowd-sourcing archive, will join us for a conversation about that project and documenting the stories of the uprising.  

Please stop by for any and all of this event. Attached is a jpg flyer in case you'd like to help us push out the last minute word by posting it on your social media pages.

Other events happening throughout the rest of the week:

•    From Belief to Action: An Interfaith Dialogue - Tonight at 5pm on Main Street

•    How to Talk to Kids about Isms Roundtable Discussion - Tomorrow at 10am in the Women's Center

•    Baltimore Walking Tour led by Kate Drabinski - " SOLD " OUT :)

Explainer: what it will take to make computer
science education available in all schools

Marie desJardins, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio recently announced that the city is investing US$81 million to establish computer science instruction in every public school in the city by 2025.

This announcement is impressive, but hardly surprising to those of us who have been watching the computer science education landscape evolve rapidly over the last eight years.

Interest in computer science (CS) at the university level declined after the “dot-com bust” of 2000, but then came back with a vengeance in 2007. Since then, student enrollment in computer science has been increasing.

As a professor of computer science who has worked extensively to improve CS education at the K-12, undergraduate and graduate levels, I know there are many more who want to go into the field of computer science. The numbers of female students and racial minorities remain distressingly low. But often these students do not have the preparation or encouragement to succeed in college-level work.

So, what are some of the challenges of expanding computer science education in the K-12 public school system?

How computer science came back as a major

The start of the new millennium saw many ups and downs in the area of computer science.

Enrollment in computer science and computer engineering degrees peaked in 2000, at the height of the “dot-com bubble.” That year, the Taulbee Survey, a survey of university computing departments conducted by the Computing Research Association, reported 79,311 undergraduate majors in doctoral-granting institutions.

But soon after the “dot-com bust” in 2000, the number of new majors dropped rapidly. By 2007, the Taulbee survey reported only 46,226 undergraduates in doctoral-granting institutions.

Despite the short-term tech downturn following the “bust,” the computing industry grew rapidly throughout the 2000s. So, by 2007, the computing industry was sounding the alarm about the dire shortage of trained computing professionals. Indeed, that very same year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics predicted that computing would be the fastest-growing professional sector, with a projected 10-year growth rate of 24.8%.

Starting in 2007, those of us in academia started to notice a few more students in our classes, and then a lot more.

In spring 2009, when I was the undergraduate program director for UMBC’s CS program, we held an emergency meeting to decide how to handle the fact that all of the sections of our required discrete math class had a waiting list.

We debated whether this was the start of a real trend, or just a blip.

Within a year or two, every computer science professor in the country knew it was not just a blip. As we scrambled to hire more faculty, increase class sizes, and try to find ways to accommodate our increasingly long waiting lists, the students just kept coming.

In 2014, the most recent Taulbee survey reported nearly 102,000 majors in computer science and computer engineering (and another 12,000 in information sciences, a category not reported in earlier Taulbee surveys) – an increase of a remarkable 120% in the seven years since the enrollment low of 2007.

Lack of instruction

But we face many challenges. Often students who want to major in computer science are not well-prepared to do so – they do not have the computational thinking or mathematical preparation to succeed in college-level coursework.

We are also not doing enough to broaden interest in computing: the percentage of female computer science CS majors remains very low, at only 14.1%, and several racial minorities are also significantly underrepresented (with African Americans representing only an estimated 3% of majors, and Hispanics representing around 7%).

According to Code.org, a nonprofit focused on expanding access to computing education in K-12 schools, 26 states permit computer science classes to count toward high school graduation (usually as a math, science or technology education credit), compared to only nine states in 2010.

Shortage of computer science teachers is a challenge.
Berkeley Lab, CC BY-NC-ND

No states, however, actually require a computer science class for graduation. As a result, the vast majority of students in the US do not take even a single computer science course throughout their K-12 education; only 25% of principals report that their school offers a CS course that includes programming; only 5% of high schools are certified to offer AP computer science; fewer than 40,000 students took the AP CS A exam in 2014 (representing fewer than 1% of AP exams); and most students leave high school with little knowledge of computational thinking or design.

Here’s what states are doing

The good news is that many states are moving rapidly to expand instruction in computing in K-12 education.

In 2012, Chicago announced a five-year comprehensive plan to establish computer science instruction in every public school, starting in elementary school. Since then, San Francisco and New York City have joined the ranks. Arkansas recently became the first state to announce that it would require every public and charter high school to offer computer science classes.

Even so, no state has fully adopted statewide universal K-12 computer science education.

On average, as of 2010, states had adopted only 55% of the 35 recommended learning standards developed by the Computer Science Teachers Association, the premier professional organization for K-12 computing education. Although all 50 states had adopted some elementary school standards (grades K-6), nearly half of the states had not adopted any high school standards (grades 9-12).

Moreover, the standards that have been adopted by states focus more on low-level skills than on abstract computational concepts, and therefore do not prepare students well for more advanced college-level computing courses.

Standards for teaching vary

An additional concern in broadening K-12 computing education is the challenge of finding qualified teachers.

Arkansas, for example, is scrambling to hire and train enough qualified teachers. As Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson stated at the time the new mandate became law, only 20 high school teachers across the entire state were actually prepared to teach computer science.

This gap between the desire for computer science classes and the availability of prepared teachers exists across the country.

Standards for teaching computer science are also either lacking or not consistent across state boundaries.

A 2013 report by ACM and CSTA states that only two states and the District of Columbia specifically require CS certification to teach computer science classes. An additional seven states require CS certification to teach Advanced Placement computer science.

In 13 other states, teaching certification in computer science CS is offered but not mandated – and in most of those states, the certification system is ineffective because programs are not offered, information is not readily available, the requirements are too complex to be understood and met by teachers, or there is no incentive to obtain a CS certification in order to teach CS classes.

Moreover, as demand for computer science classes increases, teachers in other fields with little computer science background are being tapped to teach those classes.

Challenges ahead

The computer science education community is working to develop more consistent standards across state boundaries.

In the meantime, other concerns are emerging. For example, requiring certification will exacerbate the teacher shortage problem, because so many computer science courses are currently being taught by teachers without computer science certification.

There is also a real and growing concern about attracting and keeping highly qualified teachers, since these teachers also get hired in industry.

While there has been a great deal of progress since 2010, there is still a long way to go.

Marie desJardins, Associate Dean for Engineering and Information Technology and Professor of Computer Science , University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Here are the applications for Baltimore City Robotics mentorship positions. Priority placement is given for Wednesdays 4-6 pm at Barclay School! In addition to the application, be sure to fill out the form below regarding carpooling.

"BRI Mentors commit to visiting one city middle school throughout the robotics season (Oct-Jan, and we can work with semester schedule conflicts), for one session of about 2 hours every week plus travel time.  They assist coaches and work closely with children.

"Mentors will be trained in the basics of VEX robotics, and in mentoring skills and expectations—all levels of experience are welcome.  We will arrange a training session with your group once applications are collected. Mentors will need to be fingerprinted for working with children after the training, and transportation to and from team practices is the responsibility of the student organization. If interested, please be sure to fill out both the applications and excel document in order to coordinate transportation!"

Robotics Mentor Application

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1aPiNkmIzcJIOLwl2yJXLK6rbplAbDhASFU7AtDzmfVs/viewform?edit_requested=true#

https://docs.google.com/a/umbc.edu/spreadsheets/d/1vzl1R7Lx04Zuw4ZHyxvpvtWq7_pmBJyCY5i9n3yVGbU/edit?usp=sharing 

Also, see the various upcoming opportunities for volunteering during Baltimore City Robotics League Competitions:

10/24:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1fgqs7Gmn5SzKx8OosOiWbNZuWZLACrrgIQNTg7GWVsU/viewform

https://docs.google.com/a/umbc.edu/spreadsheets/d/1QE_cnshN97SXq8G5cVPWkvyNukRAC0bfrjOBYcfopEg/edit?usp=sharing

11/7:  https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1q7r93oK8sQcjeBui9JUo5uhpEGtVhF2B7pzGJYdLGbI/viewform